COUTURE: Overshadowed, but not overmatched

Thursday

Apr 12, 2007 at 12:15 AMApr 12, 2007 at 12:19 AM

BOSTON — During the spring, Josh Beckett spelled out the average season for a starting pitcher. A handful of starts where you feel 100 percent, a handful of nights clawing for a no-decision and the other 25 starts that define a season.

Jon Couture

BOSTON — During the spring, Josh Beckett spelled out the average season for a starting pitcher. A handful of starts where you feel 100 percent, a handful of nights clawing for a no-decision and the other 25 starts that define a season.

There's little question into which of those groups Felix Hernandez's gem falls, right next to his three-hit eight innings on Opening Day. Daisuke Matsuzaka's Fenway debut, months in the making?

"After the game, the players and the manager and the coaches all came up to me and told me that I did a good job," Matsuzaka said via translator Masa Hoshino. "But despite that, seeing how well the opposing pitcher threw today, I felt that I had to hold them to as few runs as possible.

"And I'm a little bit disappointed that I wasn't able to do that today."

It was a quality start, but thrown on a night where mere quality wasn't enough. Matsuzaka's 103 pitches in seven innings against Seattle weren't all that different than his 108 last week in Kansas City. He got 10 swings and misses instead of 13, fanning four instead of 10. He threw 18 first-pitch strikes to 30 batters instead of 19 to 26.

Yet he was off, by what his record has taught observers to expect. And while that will often be good enough, it wasn't against a masterful one-hitter by the hottest starter in the majors.

"His location and his feel of some pitches today "¦ they weren't bad by (any) means, but you could tell on some of his breaking balls and stuff, they came out and backed up," catcher Jason Varitek said. "Wasn't able to finish some of them. He misfired a few fastballs, but I'll take three runs any time."

In his much-hyped meeting with Ichiro Suzuki, Matsuzaka kept the Seattle star slumping in four at-bats. He remains hitless in the series after Dice-K snared Ichiro's best chance, grabbing a bouncer to his left off a full-count fastball to start the game.

The majority of Seattle's damage, however, came thanks to a dependence on that fastball. Seattle's two-run fifth, effectively putting the game away, began when No. 9 hittier Jose Lopez pushed an outside heater to right.

After Adrian Beltre's first-pitch double made it 2-0 and designated hitter Jose Vidro climbed high, rapping a eye-level, 93-mph fastball through the middle for the game's final run.

"(Obviously Hernandez), he's the ace of the Mariners, and I felt very strongly that I didn't want them to get the go-ahead run," Matsuzaka said. "Once I allowed that first run to score, I felt very strongly that I couldn't let any more runs in after that point."

"The only pitch you'd take back," Varitek said, "is the pitch to Vidro."

Manager Terry Francona, too, said the mistakes were few and far between. He knows you can't expect masterpieces every time.

"He's going to give up runs. It's kinda hard to go downstairs and say, 'OK. Don't even leave a breaking ball up,'" Francona said. "These guys are humans and they make mistakes sometimes. Sometimes they pay for it, sometimes they don't."

Even after J.D. Drew started the eighth by finally sneaking a ball past Lopez — the second baseman had two hits, and took away more — the night remains memorable for reasons beyond Hernandez's 17 innings, four hits statline.

He is here. On a night where his stuff left him turning to 10 straight fastballs during one stretch in the sixth inning, Matsuzaka's team was always one hit away from putting the tying run on deck.

"In his eyes, it probably wasn't his best, but he made some real good pitches," Varitek said. "Shoot, you give this offense three runs to work with, we're going to have a chance to win a lot of ballgames."

Plus, it gave him a chance to tip the proverbial cap to a fanbase that's been practicing its Japanese — strikeout is 'sanshin' — since Christmas.

"With the great welcome I received from the fans here being at home, I got the sense early on that I'd finally arrived here in Boston," Matsuzaka said. "So at the very beginning, my psychological state may have been different, a little bit heightened compared to usual. But I wouldn't say that was a bad thing.

"And in addition, the great welcome I received here in my first start, I was obviously very happy to receive that. In my next start, I hope to respond to that in kind."

Jon Couture covers the Red Sox for The Standard-Times. Contact him at jcouture@s-t.com, or through his 'Better Red Than Dead' blog at SouthCoastToday.com/sports